the pressure

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the suggestions and support re: my previous post, folks. I hope my

BPD mom's doctor and other agencies can help me help her. I tell myself that I

am doing the best I can right now, but this is a big lesson in life as the child

of a BPD.

I was raised to believe that my chief role in life was to make Mom less

miserable. However possible -- cheer her up, get good grades, don't get into any

trouble (ever ever ever), be silent, be perfect, be slender, whatever it takes

to not upset her because she is a fragile sad self-hating tragedy and now that

you are here, now that she brought you into this world (against her will; she

didn't really want kids) your job is only this: Help Mom.

But the trick of the game is that Mom won't help herself. She will never seek

therapy, she will never visit doctors when she's ill, she will not eat, she will

never do anything you say.

Now she REALLY needs help. And it's the same old model: She calls me crying,

raving about how horrible her life is in this way and that way. Every suggestion

I make she rebuffs. Every effort I make she rejects. How am I to march into her

life and take control of it, when she has always controlled me? And when my

utmost desire, a gut-level instinct, is to flee?

Though it all come her suicide threats. Last night again, as always, as it has

been for years. She says, " I want to die. I want to die. Why can't I die? Why

can't I figure out a way to die? "

The pressure of hearing these words has become unbearable. How can I go about my

life, complete my work projects and be the fun-loving person my husband wants me

to be, when the woman who brought me into the world and convinced me (for many

years) that my job was to ease her pain now keeps up a constant narrative of

ultimate pain? How do I simply shrug and turn back to my own daily life and say,

" Oh well, the choices she made got her into this position, she made herself

miserable and she can't take me down with her anymore. "

I honestly have no idea what to think or say or do. Fear-obligation-guilt is a

powerful chemistry. I feel like I'm being crushed.